Been here a week and time has flown, only one more week to go. Weather beautiful, a little hot during the day but no rain. Perfect for the beach and the pool. For those interested, the Australian dollar is getting between 7,000 and 7,100 rupes.
Where are all the tourists? The management says the hotel is 70% full. What a joke. The staff tell me that it is 40% full. More like it. But looking around the pool and the restaurant at breakfast it looks more like 20%.
Nobody on the streets of Kuta. You can go out during the day and look up the street and not see another western tourist in sight. A few Japanese, Malaysians and Indonesians, but very very few white faces. It is a little better at night and some restaurants in the main part of Kuta get quite busy. But everyone says business is bad and they say it has been like that since the second bombing.
Many of the small stalls have gone. There are still collections of stalls, but nothing like the mass of people selling stuff off the pavements as before. DVD shops are everywhere. They seem to be monopolised by one chain which the locals say is controlled by a business in Surabaya. Balinese are employed in the outlets here, but do not get a share of the profits. Other smaller DVD shops appear to be Balinese owned.
The Centro complex seems to be doing good business and maybe that is taking something away from the small stallholders. Prices seem to be quite high too. Forget about buying electrical stuff, it is almost as expensive as Australia or even more so.
Did a trip out into the country one day and couldn't bring myself to bargain down from the rp400,000 the driver asked for. It was his only work for a week and he says he is doing better than the other 11 outside the hotel who cannot get any tourists at all. The few tourists taking trips are using the tours organised by the hotel.
But everyone keeps smiling. They are still the gracious, kind and hospitable people they always were, perhaps a little sadder in the eye but still friendly and welcoming.